Neuroscience

Question 1

Central Nervous System?

Answer 1

The Body’s decision maker
Brain
Spinal Cord

Question 2

Peripheral Nervous System?

Answer 2

Gathering info and transmitting CNS decisions to the other body parts

Somatic
Enables Voluntary Control of our skeletal muscles

Autonomic
Controls our glands and the muscles of our internal organs, influencing things like glandular activity, heartbeat, digestion
Auto-pilot

Question 3

Nerves?

Answer 3

Electrical cables formed of bundles of axons

Link the CNS with the body’s sensory receptors, muscles and glands

Question 4

Sympathetic nervous system?

Answer 4

Sympathetic nervous system arouses and expands energy, if something alarms you, it will accelerate your heartbeat, raise blood pressure, slow digestion, raise blood sugar and cool you with perspiration, making you alert and ready for action

Question 5

Paracympathetic nervous system?

Answer 5

conserving energy as it calms you by decreasing heartbeat, etc.
These systems work together to keep you in a steady internal rate

Question 6

What is the pons?

Answer 6

Just above the medulla, top of the brainstem, helps coordinate movement
Helps control/regulate sleep, respiration, swallowing, bladder function, hearing, equilibrium, taste, eye movement, facial expressions, facial sensation

Question 7

What is the medulla?

Answer 7

The base of the brainstem; controls heartbeat and breathing

Question 8

What is the reticular formation and where is it found?

Answer 8

A finger shaped network of neurons that extends from the spinal cord right up through the thalamus, plays an important role in sleep, wakefulness and arousal, relays info to other brain areas
Found inside the brainstem

Question 9

What behaviors are associated with the cerebellum?

Answer 9

Nonverbal learning, coordinates voluntary movements, judge time, modulate emotions, discriminate sounds and textures

Question 10

What is the limbic system?

Answer 10

A neural system including the hippocampus, amygdala and hypothalamus, located below the cerebral hemispheres, associated with emotions and drive
Emotional Brain
Highly connected to autonomic nervous system and endocrine system

Question 11

Amydala?

Answer 11

Found at the tip of each side of the hippocampus
Central role in emotional processes
Plays a significant role in the formation of emotional memories
Attaches significance to events associated with fear, punishment or reward

Question 12

Hypothalamus?

Answer 12

Below the thalamus
Helps govern endocrine system
Houses “reward centers”
Part of it uses light cues to regulate sleep/wake cycles
Controls feeding, fighting and fornication

Question 13

Hippocampus?

Answer 13

Helps encode long term memories
Integrates memories intro a network of knowledge
Special Navigation
Neurogenesis (birth of neurons)

Question 14

Thalamus?

Answer 14

Top of the brainstem, a pair of egg-shaped structures that act like the brain’s sensory switchboard
Collects information from all senses besides smell and routes it to the correct higher brain regions
Hub of traffic

Question 15

Anterior cingulate cortex?

Answer 15

Connects the limbic system to the cerebral cortex

Cognition-emotion regulation

Question 16

What is the cerebral cortex?

Answer 16

The outer covering of the 2 hemispheres of the brain
Cortex = greek bark
20-23 Billion neurons
Highest level of the brain
Responsible for most complex aspects of perception, emotion, movement and thought

Question 17

Occipital lobe

Answer 17

Visual information

Question 18

Temporal lobe

Answer 18

Hearing and Language

Question 19

Parietal lobe

Answer 19

Touch

Question 20

Frontal lobe

Answer 20

Planning, judgment, memory, reasoning, abstract thinking, movement
Motor Cortex

Question 21

How is right and left-brain activity related to personality? (i.e., what happens if you have more right hemisphere activation relative to the left?).

Answer 21

Greater Left Activity = Happier, more outgoing, friendlier

Greater Right Activity = Socially withdrawn, less satisfied with life, and prone to unpleasant emotions

Question 22

What is the corpus callosum?

Answer 22

Large band of neural fibers that connect the 2 brain hemispheres and carry messages between them

Question 23

What is the motor cortex?

Answer 23

Part of the cerebral cortex responsible for planning, control and execution of voluntary movements
Left hemisphere controls right part of body, vice versa

Question 24

What is the somatosensory cortex?

Answer 24

Part of the cerebral cortex, just behind the motor cortex that when stimulated acts to stimulate the person

Question 25

What is plasticity?

Answer 25

People’s brains change from experiences
Children’s brains are much more plastic than adults
If language is disrupted in left hemisphere, the right might compensate
Deaf people develop enhanced vision to replace hearing areas
Blind people’s sensory cortex areas corresponding to the fingers expand